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Wednesday, May 10, 2017

National Scholastic Chess Championship director Sophian A Yusuf will be filing a defamation against those who allegedly defamed him over the issue of a 12-year-old girl's dressing at the tournament.

The Star reported that those who will face the lawsuits will be the girl's chess coach Kaushal Khandar, whose Facebook post on the girl being barred from the tournament, went viral, and three others, including certain politicians.

"We will commence legal action against Kaushal as soon as we get his full particulars.

"We are looking at the possibility of suing those who have taken the Facebook post and made populist statements for their political survival," Sophian's lawyer Mohd Harris Abdullah told a press conference today.

Harris said the letters of demand to the individuals will be sent out by next week and legal action will still be taken even if they apologised.

He said his firm is currently in the midst of compiling a list of people who had slandered his client Sophian.

On April 27, Kaushal in his Facebook post, criticised the championship director and chief arbiter, whom he claimed forced the girl to withdraw from the tournament held on April 14 in Putrajaya, as the dress she was wearing was "seductive".

Kaushal had also uploaded an image of the girl's knee-length dress with his Facebook post.

Harris, however, in today's press conference claimed that the photograph uploaded by Kaushal was doctored and the actual dress worn by the girl was much shorter and above the knee, which he said was against the dress code of the school where the tournament was held.

"We have a photograph of her taken during the tournament which is completely different from the photograph in the Facebook post.

"The girl's skirt was shorter than seen in the photograph.They pulled down the skirt and then took the photograph," he said.

He added that the photograph in his possession, which was taken by official photographers of the tournament, will be tendered as evidence in court.

Kaushal and the girl's mother have declined to comment further on the matter.- Mkini